The welfare provider Haven: Home, Safe is known for the advocacy and support it gives to people in Victoria who are homeless or experiencing a housing crisis.

But housing support isn't just for the homeless and most vulnerable.

The agency, which has offices in Swan Hill, Robinvale and Mildura, also has a lesser known affordable housing program that is available for an entirely different demographic.

"Affordable housing is for a range of people", says Margrete Hamence, Haven's area manager for the state's north west.

"From people who are on low incomes - the may be on Centrelink payments - right up to 90,000 dollars."

Ms Hamence says long-term renting often creates a situation of instability for tenants.

"Often what happens for people is they've moved in, lived there for a couple of years, and then the landlord wants to sell or move back into the property, and they've got to move again."

She says through Haven's affordable housing program, tenants are able to bank on an indefinite period where they're able to stay put; this is particularly appealing to the elderly.

"What we're finding is, older people who no longer want to live in their big family home, but are struggling to find long term, secure accomodation - say with two bedrooms or even one bedroom.

"They might be on their own now, and they just want a little apartment, and it's really difficult to find.

"This is an alternative choice to renting government [housing] or private rental - so we're giving them that third choice."

Currently Haven has no vacant properties for its affordable housing program, but Ms Hamence says the agency's database for potential tenants has dwindled, with just a handful of people to call in the case of a property becoming available.

"We don't have a huge turnover, but what we've found now is that we've basically either housed people, or the people that were on our database have been housed alternatively, or moved.

"With real estates, people go in constantly," she says, "we don't get that.

"We get people who are homeless of course, and we deal with them with our other programs, but for our affordable housing, where we're looking for a wide range of community, we just want to get out there and say - hey, we exist!

Ms Hamence says there's an added incentive for building a large database, in that it allows the agency to lobby government from a stronger standpoint.

"When we have an increase in our database then we've got enough to turn around say; we've got this many people waiting for affordable housing.

"This will give us the opportunity to seek out further funding and further assistance so that we can actually build more to accomodate the growth that we have in Mildura, Robinvale and Swan Hill," she says.